…or at least its president seems to, explains Lucien de Guise.
There was a glimmer of hope in the miasma of the Middle East after the Hamas atrocities of October 7. A day later, a new church opened in Istanbul. This may not seem remarkable for a city that is home to what was the world’s largest cathedral for a thousand years. In the case of St Ephrem’s Church, it was the first Christian place of worship to be opened in Turkey for 184 years. Some suggest it’s 179 years, and others consider only the years since the founding of the Republic of Turkey. Not that the Western media is counting; the event was hardly mentioned in Europe or America.
In the Middle East, the imposing new building is big news. Even there, nobody seems to have made the connection between the founding of what is now called Türkiye, exactly 100 years before, and the opening of a church. There was a certain amount of sniggering from the English-speaking world when the nation’s official name was announced last year. Even that change is a reminder of the secularist thinking of Turkey’s founder. Ataturk championed the Latin alphabet, with a few esoteric accent tweakings, to distance the new republic from the old Arabic/Islamic associations of the written language under the Ottomans. As a small, Catholic digression, the Vietnamese writing system was Latinised for a similar reason. On that occasion it was the work of a Jesuit priest in the early 17th century. This was, again, to create some distance – not from Islam or Arabs, but from the Chinese hegemon on Vietnam’s doorstep.
The centenary of the Turkish Republic, on October 29, 2023, generated little publicity in the global media until President Erdogan used the occasion for a fiercely pro-Palestinian speech. Turkey does at least have an historic interest in the region. There are still some who look back to a golden age of harmony in the Holy Land, under a firm Ottoman hand. There was actually more tolerance for the Jewish subjects than for the empire’s many Christians.
Less celebrated than the founding of the Turkish Republic was the simultaneous end of Ottoman cleansing of Christian communities. President Erdogan is sometimes happy not to dwell on the past as he strides towards a multicultural future for his nation. He not only took centre stage – or sanctuary – at the opening of St Ephrem’s Syriac Orthodox Church, he was involved in years of groundwork beforehand. He had dug the very soil with a spade, applying the powerful feet of Erdogan the one-time semi-professional football player.
The Turkish president is still a master of complexity and paradox. The happenings at St Ephrem’s came soon after Hagia Sophia became a mosque once again. At the new church’s ribbon-cutting ceremony were representatives of numerous Christian denominations. Pope Francis sent Cardinal Koch to the opening and Mgr Arnaud du Cheyron for the consecration a few days later. The Archbishop of Canterbury also sent an emissary of goodwill.
With prayers mainly in Aramaic and Turkish, some participants may have been out of their depth; Mel Gibson would have loved at least half of it. Erdogan’s invocation left out the usual prayer to the Prophet Muhammad and focused on the Prophet Abraham instead. The father of the three monotheistic faiths makes for a sound ecumenical choice at any time, especially now.
According to the Syriac Orthodox facilitator, the amenable and quietly influential Gabriel John, who coordinated the contact between London and Istanbul: “The Turkish President was vital to every stage of the church-building project; and there are other projects on the way, including a much-needed cemetery and a school, and he promised to assist with this. More than that, his support for the new church is a statement that Christians are important and should be cared for. His main aim is to promote tolerance. There has already been criticism from his opponents. ”
Tolerance was all around at St Ephrem’s. By Erdogan’s side were the head of the Armenian Patriarchate of Turkey and the Patriarchal Vicar of the Syriac Orthodox Church, as well as the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. The top cleric among the Orthodox churches is accepted as being the suitably titled Ecumenical Patriarch. Everyone seems to approve of him, including Recip Tayyib Erdogan, who takes him for international meetings. The only anti-Ecumenicals around are the Russian Orthodox. They severed ties in 2018, when the Ecumenical Patriarch approved independence for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Faith watchers at the time might have predicted the next move of the Russian Orthodox Archbishop of Moscow’s closest political ally – Vladimir Putin.
Amid the impressive display of togetherness, nobody is pretending that inter-faith relations are perfect in the 100-year-old republic. It’s not on the Aid to the Church in Need “Red List”, but regional affairs are causing some wariness.
John Pontifex of ACN UK reports: “As a minority of less than 0.25 per cent, Christians in Turkey are beset by many difficulties. In our 2023 Religious Freedom in the World report we found that the prospects for freedom of religion in the country remain negative. International conflict and turmoil such as the Azeri-Armenian war and Russian asylum seekers fleeing the military draft for the war in Ukraine have caused Turkish public opinion to be less tolerant to Christians and other non-Muslims.”
There are those who suggest Erdogan wants to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, which seems unlikely. He is not a xenophobe. Getting back to his former football universe, Turkey has an astonishing number of foreign players at the highest level. They’re not all Germans of Turkish descent either, and a massive number are Catholics from South America. There are even a few Israelis. “We can learn much from foreign footballers,” he is quoted as saying. Nor does the Turkish President have his eye on the Caliphate, which for almost five centuries was the highest authority in the Islamic world, and in the hands of the Ottoman sultans.
He understands that Asia Minor has a history going back further than the arrival of the Ottoman Turks. The animosity between Muslim conquerors and Constantinople’s Christians in 1453 was no worse than between the Orthodox and the Western European Crusaders in 1204. Erdogan has done as good a job in bringing different denominations of Christians together as in reconciling them with the Muslims of Turkey.
Reconciliation between the Eastern and Western branches of Christianity is also in the air of Istanbul, or to be precise in nearby Nicaea. In two years’ time it will be the 1,700th anniversary of a huge event that happened outside Constantinople. The Council of Nicaea tried to bring all Christians together. We did at least get the Nicene Creed out of it. For the anniversary, though, all are being brought together by the formidable London-based Serena Fass. She has been building bridges towards this gathering for years, creating harmony wherever she ventures. Let’s hope that Erdogan-style pragmatism prevents the entire region from falling apart in the meantime.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.